We reached over 700 signatures Monday night while I was at a meeting for the Jackson Park Advisory Council. JPAC was also gracious enough to give me a few minutes to talk about our petition during the meeting. Elsewhere on Monday, City Club of Chicago hosted speeches by CTA President Dorval Carter and CDOT Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld entitled "Building a New Chicago: 21st Century Infrastructure for a 21st Century Chicago." You can watch a video of the speeches at https://www.cityclub-chicago.org/video/1224/building-a-new-chicago-21st-century-infrastructure-for-a-21st-century-chicago/ . The very first question (watch at 53:00) came from an anonymous source (please, if you know this person, tell this person to find me!) asking, "Is there a plan to extend the CTA 63rd Street Line to Stony Island to accommodate the Obama Library Center?" Pres. Carter and Commissioner Scheinfeld both balked, citing presumed funding difficulty as a deterrent to making restoration of the 'L' a priority. That's where we come in! They work for us. It's our job to make it their priority. And it's why this petition is that much more important. I wish we didn't have to petition. I wish justice and restoration were already in the plans and the due diligence of feasibility studies had already occurred. But that's not the case. Therefore, we keep petitioning. If you're available to advocate for our petition at some upcoming meetings, here are a few: August 16 (today), 6 PM: The Obama Library South Side Community Benefits Agreement Coalition is meeting at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church, 2132 E. 72nd St. specifically to discuss sustainability and transportation. See https://obamacba.org/ for more information. August 23 and 24, 4–8 PM: The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is holding a two-day open house at the South Shore Cultural Center. See http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obamacenter/ct-obama-center-transportation-community-meetings-met-20170810-story.html for more information. You can also check out some upcoming events about Transit Oriented Development (TOD). I feel it's especially important to enter into these conversations on the city's north side for at least two reasons. First, restoring the E. 63rd Street Green Line is vital to the entire region, not simply the immediate community area—which itself is nonetheless vital to the entire region. Second, from my observation, conversations about Transit Oriented Development have tended to focus unequally on upwardly mobile and gentrifying areas where populations are already dense rather than ghettoized areas (like large portions of the Jackson Park vicinity) which once were more densely populated but over the course of the twentieth century have suffered at the hands of institutional racism and suburban-style development schemes to the detriment of more integrated plans offering sustainable, transit oriented benefits. We can't do better if we're not talking with each other. Please show up and speak up. August 22, 7–9 PM: the Greater Rockwell Organization and the Northcenter Neighborhood Association will host a Transit Oriented Development Public Forum at DANK Haus, 4740 N. Western Ave. in Lincoln Square. See http://www.greaterrockwell.org/IMAGES/TOD%20Forum%2008-22-17.pdf/ for more information. August 23, 7 PM: Rogers Park Business Alliance will host another public forum on TOD at Chicago Math and Science Academy, 7212 N. Clark St. See http://www.ward49.com/news/rogers-park-business-alliance-to-host-forum-on-transit-oriented-development/ for more information. If you learn of other community meetings that you think our signers should know about, please contact us at https://63rdL.com/contact/ so we can spread the word. Please keep talking about our petition at meetings like these, in your daily conversations, and by contacting your local government officials and community activists. Please also keep inviting folks to join our petition on social media. We're on Twitter (@63rdStL) and Facebook (https://facebook.com/63rdStL/), but please share links to our website (https://63rdL.com/) wherever and as often as you can. Let's make it happen!